This basically religious agitation against Islam and its...

This basically religious agitation against Islam and its rule is exposed fully in the insistence by Arab nationalism on the argument of 'national unity.' It explains to us why a movement that is supposedly secular and engrossed in a wide-ranging 'project' for the renaissance of the Arabs should pay such exaggerated attention to an imaginary problem that does not arise in Islam either theoretically or in practice, and that, if it arose, can easily find a solution within the tolerant and humane precepts of Islam.

This argument only reveals that the main concern of the Arab nationalists is to continue that plan of the Levant minorities---independence from Islam and ties with the West---and to place before the other quiescent minorities the prospect of a similar project.

It is ironic that the Arab nationalists, who come to the Muslim majority and ask them to shed their allegiance to Islamic teachings on unity and to Islam's priority and authority over their lives, come also with a call for more commitment by the non-Muslims towards their own creeds. They completely ignore that their alleged championship of the very small minorities comes at the expense of the overwhelming majority of Muslims whom they address.

This is because their definition of minority rights has been of the negative type. These rights will be secured only against Islam, when Islamic rule has been abolished, and when the Muslims have been secularized and Westernized.

In fact, the last words point to the paradox involved in this Arab nationalist view.The rights of the minorities will be guaranteed and their problems solved only when the majority of Muslim Arabs have become like the Christians of Europe; that is, like the Christian minorities in the Arab world. This can only be described as a form of sectarian blackmail.

The nationalists, who are so enthusiastic for minority rights, do not attempt to search for them in Islam or to work for them, supposing that they have been violated under its rule. They do not even care to define these rights and problems except in the negative sense mentioned above: the rights of the non-Muslims will be guaranteed and their problems solved when Islam itself is liquidated.

Thus, Arab nationalism poses itself primarily as the solution of certain undefined problems occurring to some small minorities at the expense of the Muslim majority.